At a hearing at the House Judiciary Committee, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai faced tough questions about how his company handles data privacy and disinformation by foreign actors. Republicans on the Committee also grilled him about a perceived anti-conservative bias, which Pichai staunchly denied, saying Google uses a “robust methodology” on all topics “without regards to political ideology.” Unconvinced, these lawmakers pointed to videos and emails from Google executives expressing dislike of right-leaning ideas. Read more

Netflix is strategizing ways to court the hundreds of thousands of people in places like India that are glued to watching YouTube on their mobile phones. Only a few months, ago, Netflix chief executive Reed Hastings said sleep was Netflix’s biggest competitor. But since his company is also eyeing India for its next 100 million Netflix subscribers, that country’s focus on YouTube is concerning. Netflix and Amazon, both of which have spent billions to produce original content, still find it difficult to crack emerging markets. Read more

Android TV, first unveiled in 2014 and updated by Google in 2017, is making a splash, and NAGRA is one of a handful of companies enabling mid-sized cable and telecom operators to add the offering. According to the company’s senior director of product marketing Simon Trudelle, NAGRA is currently helping to deploy eight active 4K Android TV projects, the most recent being the United Group, a telecom/media operator in South East Europe. NAGRA provides advanced content protection technology for its hybrid TV platform. Read more

Nielsen research indicates that American consumers are regularly accessing second screens while watching television content. The study found that 28 percent of U.S. adults “sometimes” use a device such as a smartphone or tablet at the same time they are watching TV, while 45 percent say they turn to a second screen “very often” or “always.” Only 12 percent of respondents suggest that they “never” access other devices during TV viewing. Nielsen found that second screens are often being used to complement the TV viewing experience, rather than serving as a distraction. Read more

DeepMind recently released the full evaluation of AlphaZero, a single system capable of playing “Go,” chess, and shogi (Japanese chess). This new project builds on AlphaGo, a program that beat one of the best players in the world at the board game “Go” in 2016, and AlphaGo Zero, software capable of mastering the game from first principles. AlphaZero represents a dramatic step forward in AI research as it is one of the first intelligent systems capable of generalizing solutions to new problems with little to no human input. Read more